Critics of the Ombudsman System: Understanding and Engaging Online Citizen Activists
December 2015 - by Naomi Creutzfeldt & Chris Gill
Executive Summary
- This policy brief presents the outcomes and recommendations from an ESRC IAA 1 funded knowledge exchange project on activist consumer groups (‘ombudsman watchers’).
- Two workshops were held to explore the activities and significance of these ‘ombudsman watchers’ who are using the Internet and social media to protest about the operation of ombudsman schemes.The workshop with the ombudsman watchers covered the nature of their critique of ombudsman schemes; and the goals of their campaigns, the methods used to achieve them, and the responses they had obtained from ombudsman schemes and others.
- The aim of the workshop with the ombudsman schemes was to discuss what they felt the issues to be and how they had interacted with the ombudsman watchers operating in their area.
- Many of the issues raised by the ombudsman watchers touch upon important and widely recognised dilemmas for the ombudsman institution. These matters are likely to continue to be controversial and, perhaps, require a clearer and more coherently developed position amongst the wider ombudsman community.
- At the same time, the critiques put forward by the ombudsman watchers may highlight the way in which the public misunderstands the role of ombudsman schemes and may be indicative of an apparent gap between public expectation and what ombudsman schemes are set up to provide.
- Some ombudsman schemes had been very proactive in terms of engagement. However, it is not clear whether, from an ombudsman scheme’s perspective, engagement is likely to result in learning for service improvement. There was variation in the degree to which ombudsman schemes had found the critiques of ombudsman watchers constructive and useful and to what extent those critiques had informed service improvements and resulted in meaningful dialogue.
- The influence of ombudsman watchers and the degree to which they should be engaged with is likely to remain a troubling issue for ombudsman schemes. This involves balancing the need to address negative publicity and the desire to draw lessons from the experiences of dissatisfied complainants, at the same time as recognizing that this risks privileging potentially unrepresentative perspectives.
Please see https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/online-critics-of-the-ombudsmen/online-critics-ombudsmen
The full text of the article is here. It was downloaded from a Glasgow University run web site.
Another article can be found here:
https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/migrated/the_impact_and_legitimacy_of_ombudsman_and_adr_schemes_in_the_uk.pdf